Probably the most annoying personality defect that one could possibly have is being hopelessly ignorant of a subject, yet having a very loud and self-assured opinion on it. These people are utterly cemented in their baseless opinion, and nothing that could be said would change their mind. Of course, everyone should believe whatever they want to believe. The problem arises when these throngs of the self-assured ignorant begin promoting public policy that will have a direct effect on others. These people almost always and everywhere have an anti-liberty public policy stance. They are constantly advocating for greater restrictions of liberty, and criticizing any movement in the direction of less control over our daily lives. They also appear to consciously allocate time out of their day to police the opinions of others, point out the errors of their ways, but all the while remain utterly immune to counterarguments.  Despite their self-admiration, they also remain the most gullible to government propaganda, becoming veritable receptacles for the Establishment narrative. Although they believe their opinions to be purely their own, they are the unwitting, walking avatars of government talking points.

A great example of this is on display in a recent column at Enid News & Eagle, where writer David Christy strings together a series of non sequiturs in a rambling attempt to warn and chastise the reader about falling vaccination rates. Christy refers to vaccine critics as the “weakest link”, seemingly blaming them in advance for the inevitable (in his mind) resurgence of a multitude of infectious diseases.

The point he is apparently attempting to make is that society’s failure to learn from the past will inevitably lead to the same mistakes being made, which is the same unoriginal point that has already been made thousands of times before, and predictably made by people who know very little actual history. But it’s an important point, although one that could easily be turned against Christy’s own argument.

He then approaches the real target of his article: the dreaded anti-vaxxers. He appears upset that greater numbers of people are questioning the safety and efficacy of this injectable pharmaceutical product. Why don’t they just shut up and get their shots? Civilization is at risk! I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Christy has probably never heard of the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, or of the $4.5 billion paid out in vaccine injury settlements. I doubt he knows that if he is injured from a vaccine, he can’t sue the manufacturer. Instead he goes to “vaccine court” and pleads his case to a “special master”. The process takes years, and few receive a payout.

He apparently thinks that vaccines saved us from tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, malaria, and others. No, they didn’t. The sanitation movement in the United States saved us. Clean water, plumbing, and soap saved us, and are still saving us today. John Leal and George Warren Fuller are forgotten today, but were primarily responsible for the rapid decline of infectious disease in this country. Leal was a physician and water treatment expert who devised a method of public water treatment through chlorination, and lobbied the New Jersey government endlessly until it implemented his method. Fuller designed the treatment facility. The implementation of this method marked the turning point in the war against infectious disease. Not vaccines. Smallpox, stubbornly infecting thousands despite high vaccination rates, also plummeted once the process of water chlorination became routinely practiced throughout the country. Christy knows none of this I’m sure.

A painful diatribe to read, Christy drags in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to bolster his argument that a right-wing fascist government could again arise, lest we learn the mistakes that led to Nazi Germany. Does he realize that fascism can arise in more than one way, and that a society in the grips of fear could backpedal directly into the type of fascist totalitarianism that Christy ostensibly fears.

Christy’s entire piece appears to be nothing more than an attempt to satisfy some inner impulse to chide society at large for failings that he perceives will lead to world-ending catastrophe. What he doesn’t realize is he is engaging in just the sort of behavior that could inadvertently lead to just such a catastrophe that he seeks to avert, because the fear he is peddling is far more dangerous than the apparitions he sees on the horizon.

What we truly have to fear is the transformation of the voting public into a fear-enveloped mob, cowering before the myriad phantoms that the Political Class conjures up in order to Pied Piper the public into consenting to various authoritarian measures.

What we have to fear is truly fear itself, due to the destructive power that that fear can have on our liberty and safety. Fascism arises out of sufficiently politicized fear. Fear reverts the mind of a person back to an animal. Mass fear transforms the populace into a seething emotional mob that can be coaxed into supporting all manner of legislative atrocities. It’s this baseless fear that we must resist, fear that Christy insists we give in to.

Many are puzzled at the popular appeal of socialist sympathizer Bernie Sanders. Don’t those youngsters know that you can’t just have everything handed to you? He’s promising welfare and, horrors, socialism! Well, yes, yes they do, but Bernie’s supporters see the enormous hypocrisy in the opponents of his brand of welfare-statism. What needs to be understood, crucially, is that the United States has engaged in socialism for decades, albeit socialism exclusively for the Warfare State. Everyone who is suddenly decrying “socialism”, the sound of pearls audibly clutched, chooses to ignore the debt-funded war socialism they’ve allowed to continue. Bernie supporters see this, and think, “why not spend the trillions here at home rather than wasting it on military misadventures?”

No socialism at all, for anyone or any industry, should be the goal. But denouncing socialism in the abstract while also remaining complacent about the outrageous wealth transfers occurring in the name of national security destroys the argument that so many are making in the face of Sanders’ campaign. Socialism for the rich and well-connected does exist, as do regulations that shield the established rich from the dynamic, virtuous forces of a competitive market that would distribute wealth to where it truly belongs.

Bernie supporters are misguided, yet do have their heart in the right place. They see massive inequalities of wealth. They see the trillion-dollar wars and wonder why that money isn’t being spent here at home, on programs that would help people here. The right answer to the trillion dollar wars is that government should never have gotten their dirty paws on the money in the first place. It should’ve remained in the pockets of the people who earned it, or it shouldn’t have been printed, or it shouldn’t have been stolen from future generations. The federal government’s power to print and borrow is the real culprit, and should be stripped utterly. That power should be the focus of the outrage.

The recognition that something is dreadfully wrong, combined with a sincere desire to fix it, is the correct starting point that will lead to social change. The problem, though, is that these Bernie bros are sitting ducks for the wave of socialist pseudo-intellectuals who are exploiting their naive idealism and channeling it into supporting totalitarian pipe dreams that will achieve the exact opposite of their goal. But it’s just a simple step for Bernie supporters to realize that the true path to radical humanitarian change is through a policy of unrestricted liberty. They only need to look at marijuana legalization. Did they support it? But it was a revolution for the marketplace, for dreaded “capitalism”. And yet it created a miracle. If only they could apply that same radical principle, of removing every government-created barrier to voluntary exchange, they would realize that their goal of lifting the poorest, most at-risk among us lies in, not socialism, but liberty.

Amazing Jimmy Dore stand-up, along with his panel comedians, in which he explains how the Political Class is attempting to exhume the “Russian interference” narrative in order to attack both Trump and Sanders:

Pfizer and Merck both spent a quarter million each, and just in Maine. How the hell is this corporate influence being tolerated? Notice the vaccinate-at-any-cost group, Every Child By Two, also donated a massive amount. But it’s really just more Pharma money, laundered through an organization that gives i a faux-scientific prestige.

Hat tip to the Facebook group, The Thinking Mom’s Revolution.

House Bill 3227, which would allow cannabis deliveries to patients unable to travel to a dispensary, passed unanimously out of committee, and is headed for a vote by the legislature, which will surely pass.

Interesting piece at National Interest regarding the healing potential of yet another psychedelic compound. 

If there’s one act of legislative authoritarianism guaranteed to draw thousands of opponents to the state capitol, it’s a mandatory vaccination bill. The most recent example being bill 5044 in Connecticut, which would eliminate the religious and philosophical exemption currently allowed for school children. A hearing and testimony on the bill drew thousands of opponents to the state capitol, many of whom remained all night until their voice was heard.

Other examples abound. New Jersey, for instance. A mandatory vaccine bill in that state’s legislature died amid the protests of thousands of citizens who gathered around the capitol building for over 8 hours.

And here in my home state of Oklahoma, the very active and very effective Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights organization rallies hundreds to the state capitol for Parental Rights Day, to protect the parents of this state from the encroachments of a medical community that appears to care more about forcing a pharmaceutical product on as many children as possible than the rights of those children or their parents.

We are to believe that the mandated use of a product that has resulted in over $4 billion in injury settlements and whose manufacturers are shielded from legal liability over vaccine injuries should be mandatory? A steadily increasing schedule of vaccines required of children, combined with a steady rise in autoimmune and neurological disorders among US children, means that fewer and fewer people are buying the “safe and effective” line, and they will show up in thousands at the mere hint of a mandatory vaccine bill.

It’s no surprise that the cartelized, anti-competitive, authoritarian organizations that comprise the U.S. medical establishment opposes the protection of parental rights; after all, children are an extremely profitable market, but that profitability can only be tapped once the power of parents to intercede is removed. And so it is no surprise that the Oklahoma State Medical Association opposed House Bill 3014, which would update the current ‘Parent’s Bill of Rights’ to simply and explicitly include protections against medical procedures performed on children without parental consent. It would also discourage doctors from retaliating against the parents of patients by involving child protective services in the event that the parents disagreed with the doctor’s medical opinion. Seems like a fairly common sense, straightforward assertion of rights in a country of free individuals, right? The problem is that very little liberty exists for the average American citizen when they deal with the healthcare industry in this country. It’s authoritarianism is deeply entrenched, and any exercise or assertion of parental rights is seen as an act of defiance that the medical authorities attempt to punish, whether through intimidation, or the involvement of law enforcement.

The HB 3014, voted on February 19th, unfortunately did not pass out of committee.

Foreign policy is not something that Bernie Sanders speaks of often. His focus has been primarily on domestic policy. But it is inevitable that if he wins the White House, foreign policy will come front and center. And he will have to make one of two choices: an easy one, and a hard one. The easy choice will be to allow the bombs to drop, to expand the bombing. The hard choice will be to refuse. I have a feeling that he will give in. I’d bet the farm on it, in fact. He will sign off on the bombs just like every other President has thus far. He’ll grovel before Saudi Arabia and Israel, he’ll threaten Iran, he’ll make an attempt to implement his domestic policies, most of which will have a fate similar to that of Trump’s Wall. The question is, how will his supporters react once he bloodies his hands as commander in chief of a vast and violent empire? How will they react to the varied rationales for war that he will give Congress and the country?

Sanders appears to have no solid principle regarding foreign policy. Which means that he will fold up like a wet noodle to the incessant pressure of the foreign policy Establishment that has crafted into high art the bullying of elected leaders into acquiescing to their policy demands. Unlike Tulsi Gabbard, who is immovable as a sequoia in matters of foreign policy, Sanders will compromise. In fact, “compromise” remains the only principle left among our elected officials. Compromise being the default position of those without anything unyielding within them, and it shows in their mannerisms, the sound of their voice, and their actions. It is an ugly thing to behold, but so common now that its expected. Sanders will compromise on foreign policy to get what he wants on domestic policy. He’ll sign off on the massive military budgets, sign off on the next war, sign off on surveillance, in order to have a shot at “Medicare for all”.  It won’t happen, but the military-industrial-tech complex will most certainly get their check. Sad, but true.

Once it happens, once President Bernie begins giving his seal of approval to wave upon wave of bombings, what will his supporters say? They say and do the same thing that the supporters of President Trump have done: absolutely nothing. But they will vote for him again.

Very interesting and concerning article up at Dogs Naturally, discussing the unintended, never-discussed consequences for dogs of getting their shots:

“The vaccinated, but not the non-vaccinated, dogs in the Purdue studies developed autoantibodies to many of their own biochemicals, including fibronectin, laminin, DNA, albumin, cytochrome C, cardiolipin and collagen.

This means that the vaccinated dogs — “but not the non-vaccinated dogs”– were attacking their own fibronectin, which is involved in tissue repair, cell multiplication and growth, and differentiation between tissues and organs in a living organism.”

The concern that vaccines are confusing the immune system, causing it to begin attacking the body itself, has been a primary concern for all those people that have been marginalized and dismissed as crazy “anti-vaxxers”. Why the disconnect? Why is it so hard for so many people to discuss the dangers of vaccination?

H/t Facebook group, “Your Baby, Your Way”